It’s not just me that thinks Nokia’s a-bag-a-shite - SMS Text News:
I often feel that I am the only chap on the planet calling out Nokia for piss poor innovation and ridiculous, ridiculous lack of attention to really important elements %u2014 especially when I%u2019m regularly coming into contact with Symbian fanatics.
Ewan’s post about his ongoing love-hate relationship with Nokia reminded me that I wanted to tell you all about my Wednesday morning: two and a half hours spent installing the Nokia N-Series PC Suite and Software Updater, and using them to backup my phone, upgrade its firmware, and restore it. Good times!
I know that a very small number of Nokia users will ever undertake such a task, but is that any reason to design it to discourage them from ever using it again? I remain pretty ambivalent about the iPhone, but the simplicity and ease of use with its iTunes integration provides a pretty useful model to follow for that sort of thing. To be fair, PC Suite is far, far, FAR better than it used to be. Its level of annoyance is now at, eh, a poke in the eye, rather than being hit in the crotch with a hammer. But it’s still got a long way to go.
“Its level of annoyance is now at, eh, a poke in the eye, rather than being hit in the crotch with a hammer.”
LOL
Agreed - recent experiences:
- Backup, flash firmware, restore fails due to new firmware version. Duh!
- Try to download maps: asks where to install to, F: or G: on the N95 8Gb? Huh? Since when has it had DOS drives? Gave up in the end.
At least the Outlook syncing seems to be working now: http://is.gd/s1I
Carlo, sounds like you and I have a lot in common. Agree with everything you say about the user experience. I’ve gone through the same thing. But to give Nokia some credit, I think they are innovating at a higher level in terms of integrating the phone with the PC. At least, more than any of the other major mobile phone makers. I think they’re moving in the right direction, but have a case of the Microsoft disease by launching half-baked products just to get them out quickly.
Along the lines of what Tim said, I don’t think it’s entirely fair to brand Nokia as un-innovative. What Nokia are doing in terms of innovation is all taking place online and in how they leverage online services and products through the handsets. Ovi, Mosh, Labs, Video Centre, Download, Share are all services which they have managed to get operators to agree to retain on handsets when shipped. What this really means is that ‘Normobs’ might get their first use of rich media services via the handset and once using, look around for other services out there.
I think that’s an incredibly innovative and ballsy strategy for a handset manufacturer - aside from the iPhone (where innovation is in the UI only really), can you think of any other manufacturer doing anything nearly as forward thinking?
My take on this:
- to get Nokia to synch with a PC, dump the PC and get a MAC. I have an N73 and N95 and music, photos, address book, calendar, etc. all worked in 5 minutes.
- Got my wife an iPhone (in line with yesterday’s NYTimes article that says babes are the big market for Iphones now. I figure the N95, for me, is much higher utility. Better camera, more robust, synchs with iTunes, real buttons, etc.